The speed, the accuracy, the economy; the pleasant, quiet, assured manner of these skilled employees was a very different thing from the old slipshod methods of the ordinary general servant.
So the work slowly prospered, while Diantha began to put in execution the new plan she had been forced into.
While it matured, Mrs.Thaddler matured hers.

With steady dropping she had let fall far and wide her suspicions as to the character of Union House.
"It looks pretty queer to me!" she would say, confidentially, "All those girls together, and no person to have any authority over them! Not a married woman in the house but that washerwoman,--and her husband's a fool!" "And again; You don't see how she does it?
Neither do I! The expenses must be tremendous--those girls pay next to nothing,--and all that broth and brown bread flying about town! Pretty queer doings, I think!" "The men seem to like that caffeteria, don't they ?" urged one caller, perhaps not unwilling to nestle Mrs.Thaddler, who flushed darkly as she replied.

"Yes, they do.

Men usually like that sort of place." "They like good food at low prices, if that's what you mean," her visitor answered.
"That's not all I mean--by a long way," said Mrs.Thaddler.She said so much, and said it so ingeniously, that a dark rumor arose from nowhere, and grew rapidly.

Several families discharged their Union House girls.
Several girls complained that they were insultingly spoken to on the street.